Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance

I'm a transgendered sex worker, and I want to not get killed for who I am or what I do. As our death count rises, I beg that you consider your prejudices around gender, and let us live in peace. I'm literally begging for my life.

No longer are we forced to wear skirts, or cover our faces. This is
blurring our gender binary system, by letting female identified women come
together and wear what they want, when they want it. Transgendered people are a
natural ally in this movement, because we too are blurring the gender binary.
Some of us that are transgendered are very clearly male
identified or female identified regardless of what we were assigned at birth.
But others are less clear from a social standpoint and have a very strong sense
of self that exists somewhere in between. This blurring of the gender binary is
a wonderful thing, because it lets all of us be who we are and be treated with
respect for our identities.

Yet, transgendered people regularly
suffer violence, and even death for simply being who we are. We are still
classified as having a mental health disorder, even though leading transgendered scholars have proven that it doesn’t
help us at all. Many of us have a very hard time after transition staying in
our chosen profession, and we end up doing all sorts of socially unacceptable
jobs, including sex work, which further puts us at a social disadvantage. When police are
regularly documented beating us up, when nobody ever looks for our
killer, when society doesn’t let us go to the
bathroom in peace, we know it’s time for change.